The User Experience of Wildly Successful Mobile Games

Patrick Lung

Successful games reach huge audiences.

• These games together account for over 4 billion downloads

• Candy Crush made $1.5b in revenue last year

• Top games from now and few years ago

Topics of Discussion

• First User Experience Conceptual Fluency

• First User Experience Procedural Fluency & Control/Display Compatibility

• Error Correction & Timing

• Importance of Design style

• Reset time

• Social media and leaderboards

• In-game purchases

Note: Correlation does not equal causation!

First User Experience Conceptual Fluency

First User Experience Procedural Fluency & Control/Display Compatibility

All four games are ridiculously simple.

• Immediate understanding of “what” to do

• <1 minute to learn “how” to play

• Touch movements lead to a predictable in-game action

Error Correction & Timing

Error tolerance starts out high.

• Provide little pressure to perform

• Time ends a level but is not a losing condition

• Temple Run doesn’t have a win condition

– Thus, increasing difficulty, along with decreasing error tolerance, is accepted by players

Design style

Cartoon and pseudo-realism work well for the widest range of audiences.

• Often called “tacky” and “cartoon-y”

• Graphics are not stellar by any means

– Content is king for virality

Reset time

Reseting levels are either quick or unnecessary

• Reset-ing a level takes less than three seconds

• Candy Crush Saga is very unpredictable so that one never knows if you can finish a level

– Never feel the urge to start over

Social media and leaderboards

Not all viral games have leaderboards.

• Social media at non-intrusive moments

• Most effective if it fits into the gameplay

In-game purchases

Successful games accept payment for a variety of services.

• Pay to play more levels

• Pay for upgrades to get higher scores

• Pay for another attempt

• Pay for the game to look better

Observations

• The game must be simple and easy to play

• Game starts out with a high error tolerance

• Make replaying levels a quick affair

• Leaderboards and in-game purchases vary from game to game

• Note: Correlation does not equal causation.

Thanks for listening!